See if this doesn’t make your head spin.
Our Co-Chairman, Barry Goldwater Jr.
“As a son of Arizona, I know we have no greater resource than the sun. Republicans want the freedom to make the best choice and the competition to drive down rates.That choice may mean they save money, and with solar that is the case. Solar companies have a track record of aggressively reducing costs in America. We can’t let solar energy – and all its advantages and benefits it provides us – be pushed aside by monopolies wanting to limit energy choice. That’s not the conservative way and it’s not the American way.”
Our Co-Chairman Tom Morrissey
“Conservatives who support school choice and healthcare choice should join me in supporting energy choice. As conservatives, we are morally obligated to fight new tax proposals. Monopoly utilities request to end net metering amounts to a tax on solar savings. It also seeks to line the pockets of a regulated monopoly through government intervention. I am proud to join Barry Goldwater Jr. in leading the charge towards more energy competition and private investment.”
(SCOTTSDALE, Ariz.) After failing to convince the Arizona Corporation Commission to impose a $50 a month surcharge on rooftop solar customers, the empire is trying to strike back.
Arizona Public Service is working to convince Arizona lawmakers to make permanent a new property tax on solar customers who lease their systems. Approximately 80% of homeowners in Arizona lease their solar systems. If allowed, this tax would make it more difficult for home and business owners to save money by installing solar and it would undermine the state’s solar industry which is currently the only competition that the state’s energy monopolies have. Despite spending millions of dollars and funneling money through shady front groups to promote their proposed $50-$100 per month solar surcharge, APS’ efforts exploded like the Death Star. But that’s not stopping them from trying again. A lobbyist with close ties to APS is pushing the passage of HB2595 which codifies a bizarre change in Arizona taxation laws that imposes a property tax only on customers who lease their solar systems.
And while APS continues to deny ties to attempts to make the tax permanent, it should be noted that last year APS denied claims that it was involved in third-party anti-solar campaigns. Those claims turned out not to be true by APS’ own admission. So can we really trust the claims that they’re making now about not trying to undermine the solar industry yet again?
APS’ anti solar efforts have already had a negative impact on the Arizona economy. The number of people employed in the solar energy industry in Arizona fell by more than 1,200 in 2013 according to a report issued by The Solar Foundation. The Foundation says APS’ anti-solar efforts likely played a role in that job loss.
T.U.S.K. (Tell Utilities Solar won’t be Killed) was formed to stand up for energy choice and solar savings. TUSK Co-Chairman Barry Goldwater Jr. stated, “What part of ‘Don’t tax the sun’ does APS not understand? It’s obvious our work as far from over as this utility monopoly looks for new ways tax a competitor out of the market.”
To learn more about T.U.S.K. visit www.dontkillsolar.com.
T.U.S.K. believes that rooftop solar is similar to a charter school—it provides a competitive alternative to the monopoly. Monopoly utilities aren’t known for reducing costs or for driving business innovation, but the Arizona solar industry is. Solar companies have a track record of aggressive cost reduction in Arizona. The more people use rooftop solar, the less power they need to buy from the utilities. Energy independence for Arizonans means smaller profits for the utilities, so APS is doing everything it can to stop the spread of independent solar.
Republicans. Even when they are on the right side of a position, it’s always for the wrong reasons.
Lets not forget who is fomenting the division and why.
“Despite spending millions of dollars and funneling money through shady front groups to promote their proposed $50-$100 per month solar surcharge, APS’ efforts exploded like the Death Star. ”
Wedge politics. And astroturf. Brought to you by Koch.
Thats why the GreenTea development happened. People woke up. Its hard to fault the idea of choice and competition as an improvement over monopoly. The main reason most are still using oil is because of monopoly. Monopoly is the antithesis of democracy and grass roots.
Here’s an innovative design for a warmer future:
http://inhabitat.com/affordable-solar-powered-floating-village-planned-for-edinburgh/
Just goes to show, even most “conservatives” like a free ride at someone else’s expense. They don’t mind being able to use someone else’s wires, voltage support, regulation, and everything else and get paid as if they were providing those services instead of consuming them (taxes included!).
Real conservatives say “pay for what you use” and “eat your own dog food”. It would be quite feasible for PV owners to use their noon-time peaks to run their air conditioners, turning excess power into ice for the evening hours. That would eliminate the issue of selling fickle power flows for several times the cost of the fuel saved. But that would also eliminate the major benefit of the free ride.
“… able to use someone else’s wires, voltage support, regulation, and everything else…”
Those would be the wires, etc that they paid for already, like everybody else with their taxes, user fees, etc over the years, right? The wires, etc, that are usually, in fact, held quasi-publicly; the wires that may not even be owned by the companies pushing for these extra fees?
These would be the wires that, for almost all of households outside of the American Southwest, are going to still be needed by people with solar panels on their roofs, as they try to replace their fossil fuel use with electricity and therefore will still be paying money into the system, just like they have been doing all along? Those wires, right?
The shareholders and bondholders paid for them. The electric bill pays to replace damaged and worn-out poles, wires, insulators, transformers, etc. and to pay back the shareholders and bondholders. If the homeowners want to own the wires, all they need to do is go to a stockbroker and buy the company out.
Exactly: they still need those wires, and the costs don’t change when the power flow changes direction. Which is why “net metering”, which PAYS CONSUMERS for USING the wires instead of making them PAY to use them, needs an overhaul in such an environment.
Your characterization of net metering is simply dishonest. Net metering does not pay consumers for using the wires, it credits residential and small-business generators for electricity they supply to the grid, electricity which the utility then sells to consumers. and sends out bills which reflect the net amount of power used in a billing period. Are you seriously advocating that utilities be allowed to sell that power without compensating the parties that generate it?
If that electricity is generated by PV panels it is typically offsetting peak demand which utilities supply with more expensive peaker plants or by purchasing power from outside generators – both of which are costlier than the rate credited to the generator. For example, the current ERCOT price cap for peak power is $3,000/MWhr (yes, $3.00 /kWhr) – much higher than the $0.11/kWhr Austin Energy credits a homeowner for surplus power. Granted, peak prices rarely reach the price cap – a quick look at ERCOT showed a price of $404.53/MWhr today – but utilities still make a profit on reselling that surplus power.
Even if a utility customer installs so much PV and/or wind capacity that he produces more electricity than he uses – so the net is negative – the utility just shows him as having a credit – it doesn’t send him a check so it isn’t out any money. But the utility does receive revenue from reselling that power to customers who don’t produce what they consume.
What APS wants is to double-bill for the wires. They want to bill customer generators for supplying power, and they want to bill customer consumers for supplying that same power. It’s just a bald-faced attempt to increase profits.
Correct. Consumers generating rooftop solar are giving money to the utility and all the other consumers. How? First off, solar PV installation is discouraged from generating more than the amount of consumption. That is, no excessive net checks to the rooftop solar. For this reason alone, the question of utility payments to PV is moot. Instead, the annual generation is allowed to just balance consumption, if there is a small difference, the consumer gets wholesale, 5c, the utility gets peak 29c + tier 15 c from 1 to 7 pm, during solar generation. Peak annual demand is afternoon in summer air conditioning load. Solar reduces peak demand at that critical time. Less transmission and distribution on next years planning, less maintenance, lowered utility bill for all consumers. In fact, the utility uses the grid to transfer solar PV generation to neighbors and pocket a tidy profit, while grid maintenance and expansion costs are lowered. Utilities want solar users to pay the same bill before solar, but take the solar generation and sell it to another consumer. Exactly the same as a consumer that conserved and lowered consumption. Solar users don’t switch because they get utility payments, they switch because their utility payments are higher than their solar payments. Honestly, does anyone think consumers are going to buy expensive peak power instead of cheaper solar? The utility message is simple. We bought expensive generators expecting bigger demand, but demand dropped. Our mistake is your loss because we are more powerful than individual consumers. Now that they have a cheaper competitor, they want to introduce laws to ban competition. The harder they struggle to prevent progress the bigger they lose. If they go bankrupt, it’s not consumers fault. It’s utilities fault for clinging to the past, instead of embracing the future. They should be funding and benefiting from the solar revolution, not delaying and losing.
I know a lot of people aren’t detail-oriented, but it’s so simple that you have NO excuse:
1. Net metering is just that; net metering. A customer who generates as much as they use can wind up with a net bill of zero.
2. This means that the customer has not only paid nothing for energy, they’ve paid nothing for the wires, for other services, or for taxes.
3. In other words, if the customer PAYS to RECEIVE power, the customer GETS PAID to TRANSMIT their power.
4. The customer is thus paid for the use of the utility’s wires, QED.
This is not sustainable. If nobody’s paying to keep up the wires, they will fall apart and stop working. This is just as true of the other essential services currently rolled into electric bills as part of the per-kWh fee.
You ARE seriously advocating that the regulation, reactive power, spinning reserve and other services that cannot stop even for seconds without the grid blacking out… be provided AT NEGATIVE PRICE to “net metering” generators. That is not a question, that is a fact.
It’s fair to pay “renewable” generators a rate that credits them for fuel saved, and bills them for the costs of “firming” up the variable and un-dispatchable power they put on the grid. Net metering is just a scam.
Many of these markets see peak demand in the evening, after the sun has gone down.
If rooftop PV is so great, its owners should be happy to fix the “duck belly” themselves. They should be happy to e.g. use batteries to store their noon-time generation peaks and use them to meet the evening demand peak, or run their air conditioners to make ice during the day and use it for cooling into the night hours. I see no such goodwill.
“…Peak annual demand is afternoon in summer air conditioning load….”
The elephant in the room is that peak annual demand is going to be in winter, at night, everywhere but the far South.
Because all the homes, businesses, municipal buildings, etc are going to have to throw their furnaces and boilers and internal combustion engines out onto the sidewalks for collection, and they are going to have to install electric heaters and motors.
How many homeowners are going to free of the grid at that point is going to be negligible. The whole notion will be as quaint as buggy whips. The question is whether we all want to pay through the nose for our energy, or go all public (nationalize the industry), go green, share the costs and benefits of harvesting energy which falls to us from the sky.
If net metering means no bill, a complete balance to the utility customer relationship, then the consumer is acting like a battery the utility owns that charges up at night for 5c/ kwhr and discharges during the day from1 to 6 pm at 45c/ kWhr, except they don’t have to purchase the battery. ( about 20c/ kwhr 8am to 1 pm )For every customer that goes solar, they turn into a battery. That means the utility is getting 40c / kwhr instead of 45c / kwhr and getting a reduction in peak demand and t and d maintenance costs. The real reason utilities are against solar is that they have to amortize a lot of expensive generators purchased hoping demand would rise. This has been the utility business model for centuries. Capacity is so expensive, economics only work with increasing demand, flat demand won’t do it. Along with PUC guaranteed rates of return, they are incentivized to build more generators. Conservation and solar break that. Conservation is responsible for more plant closures than solar. All the solar fuss in the US is about what the utilities are afraid will happen, not about what has happened yet. Shall we penalize the users that cut consumption? They are not paying for increased utility grid and generators, either. Solar is an even better deal for the utility than conservation. Shall we penalize users that have no air conditioning or reduce air conditioning? Or shall we make those that consume more during peak demand foot the bill? In the end, the utility does not care, as long as all the costs are passed to the ratepayers, and the smallest risk falls to investors and utilities, they are ok with it.
Correction. Rooftop PV acts like a battery utilities don’t have to purchase.
A battery stores energy and returns it on demand. PV, rooftop or otherwise, is nothing like that. If you think “rooftop PV acts like a battery”, you have some serious cognitive issues.
Peak demand is higher in the summer in the US even New England and Midwest.
https://www.ferc.gov/market-oversight/mkt-electric/midwest.asp
cooling is always a much bigger load than heating… agreed.
Shareholders and bond payers expect a rate of return. When the ratepayers pay, they finance the bond holders and share holders. It’s specious to claim only the capitalists paid for the grid. Without ratepayers, there are no payments for the grid.
There’s a division between the ratepayers and stock/bond holders because the ratepayers as a group don’t want to build their own utility. They’re using Other People’s Money to get electricity delivered to them. Given the cost and difficulty of DIY, that’s a pretty sweet deal.
If nobody builds a grid, there are no ratepayers because there’s nothing for them to buy. Given that most people choose not to locate where they can’t get electricity, the lack of people willing to put money into utility stocks and bonds has to be viewed as a serious negative for the society.
The ratepayers can always buy the shares and bonds if they want to. That would eliminate the division. If they spend their money elsewhere, it’s their own choice.
You were right, my head is spinning!
“Conservatives who support … healthcare choice should join me in supporting energy choice”
Couldn’t have picked a more bizarre comparison between what they define as a “healthcare choice” and choosing how you procure your electricity.
Need to go now, rest my brain…
LOL. Hope you recover. Your mind is a garden. Your thoughts are the seeds.
http://hellopoetry.com/william-wordsworth/quotes/
A walk through a nice garden could help clear that up.
Fascinating to watch the conservative vs selfservative trainwreck in progress:
free-market ideology devouring the ideology that abuses it.
If this results in a healthy and sustainable biosphere, then bring it on.
“Selfservative” – I’ll be adding that one to my lexicon.
Apologies for off topic subject, Southern Hemisphere news – that once in a century event in New Zealand, getting all to familiar these days everywhere
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=11214174
redsky – sorry to hear of the extreme weather. Thanks for keeping us posted.
Republicans these days support monopolies and corporate control, even if they don’t realize it. The war they’ve waged against solar energy is as unconscionable as it is against their stated values. A set of so-called values that is now little more than facade.
The party has become little more than lap-dogs for established and very powerful corporations. A worst brand of calcification of a worst kind of status quo. AKA business as usual enforced reliance on dirty, dangerous and depleting fossil fuels.
Looks like the party is splitting a bit. GreenTea is not going along with the master plan, dictated by powerful, corporate, utility interests. There are some encouraging cracks in their wall of denialism and some failures of their divide and conquer approach to subduing the masses.
Green Tea. I like that. Sounds encouraging.
http://climatecrocks.com/2013/08/12/the-koch-brothers-worst-nightmare-a-green-tea-coalition/
Read all about it. Or watch the vid. 🙂
“You never change things by fighting the existing reality,” the famed visionary R. Buckminster Fuller reminded us from his office at Southern Illinois University. “To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete.”
Seems to me solar PV has done that. It’s up to utilities to realize how to adapt to the consequences of inevitable change.
““To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete.”
Seems to me solar PV has done that. It’s up to utilities to realize how to adapt to the consequences of inevitable change.”
Better yet, it is up to government to force utilities to adapt their mission. Fuller is right – we can make the fossil fuel industry obsolete. The better business model is a public (non profit) renewable energy utility system.
As far as I can tell, the private market has failed completely, and we need to drop them out of the picture before it is too late.
I tend to agree, with this caveat. Most people think individual when they think private. The picture is DIY energy conservation. Large monopolies think private means warren Buffet, not Joe Schmo. IMO, the grid should be an energy superhighway owned publicly, non profit. Private investor power and deregulation gave us the Enron debacle. The irony is that large corporations are trying to stifle free market development through government regulation. No matter which way you go, the richest and most powerful will game the system. Indications are, the rooftop solar revolution is unstoppable. The economics are driving it.
Some are getting into all or nothing extreme arguments again. The grid is not going away. What’s happening is peak demand is lowering. Solar PV acts like a battery utilities don’t own that charges at night during low demand and generates during the day at high demand. The grid does not go away, but since peak demand is lowered, grid and generation reserve requirements are lowered. Conservation does the similar without the battery features. Utilities problem is that they have a grid and generator overhang. Stranded assets. They are trying to get the ratepayers to,pay for their bad investment decisions. It’s the same old. Private profit, socialized losses.
Reactive power is a non issue. Solar PV adds no reactive power load to the grid. Its the air-conditioning and other loads that add reactive power needs. Some solar can actually reduce reactive load and there are plans to market frequency regulation as an asset to utilities. In an interesting twist, the Midwest, not normally considered the best market for storage, has been found to be a good market for storage combined with solar, by providing frequency regulation and other services that add high value. “We are all about monetizing storage when it’s combined with solar,” said Jay Marhoefer, founder and CEO of Intelligent Generation. IG integrates client-owned storage assets with the grid to cut demand charges, as well as to provide frequency regulation or other services based on the owner’s needs.”
http://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/read/intelligent-generations-software-makes-solar-and-storage-more-attractive
Since inverters have energy services capability, it is only a question of who will develop them and when. Then solar will have additional value.